Apple Surprises: Numbers, Culture & Structure — Monday Note

Another timely Apple reality check by Jean-Louis Gassée

"Apple’s big surprise in its quarterly numbers isn’t the end of 13 years of go-go growth but the emergence of Services as a very large revenue category. This leads us to a cultural/structural question."

Later in the post:

Today, we’ll turn to the Services number Apple just disclosed: $5.99B for the January to March 2016 quarter: [See the source for a summary chart] 

That’s 11.8% of total revenue, higher than Mac and iPad, second only to the iPhone. In contrast to the other declining lines, services revenue is up 20% from the same quarter a year ago. A bigger surprise, perhaps, it is also higher than Facebook's latest quarterly revenue: $5.38B. 

Apple Surprises: Numbers, Culture & Structure — Monday Note